


Escape Acts

by somekindofseizure



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s04e13 Never Again, Episode: s10e04 Home Again, Hotel Sex, MSR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 10:34:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5964165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindofseizure/pseuds/somekindofseizure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully's night in the hotel after her mother dies and she insists they go to Philadelphia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape Acts

They are sitting at a tiny wooden table at a Sheraton in Philadelphia. They have cleared away a telephone, a clump of cheaply branded stationary, and seemingly countless leather folders filled with emergency exit maps in order to make room for the greasy cheesesteaks Mulder decided to pick up. Scully is hunched over the table, slurping and gulping, stopping only to lick her fingers. It is only then, as she sheepishly draws a finger from her mouth, that she realizes Mulder is watching her closely.

“What?”

“You didn’t eat today, did you?”

She picks onion from the oily foil and slurps it, follows it with a gulp of Coca-Cola.

He smiles approvingly, though he knows she doesn’t need any affirmations in this regard. She is focusing already on the end of her sandwich, peripherally distracted by a stain on her light blue shirt.

“Dammit.”

“This is club soda,” he says, pushing forward his drink.

She dips a napkin in it and dabs at the stain, dimpling the swell of her cleavage, shaking her head at her own gullibility. “Why do we all buy into this club soda thing? Has it ever actually worked for anyone?”

Her voice is crisp and critical, miles away from a few hours ago when she had croaked, “Let’s go to Philadelphia.” One hundred and thirty nine miles, to be exact.

She had packed a small bag and left her feelings in a drawer. She thinks if she keeps eating and moving and working she won’t notice what’s happening. Mulder wishes she could hole up forever in a chain hotel while pain leases out her home. He would sit with her, bring her greasy food and distract her to her heart’s content. But since he knows it is not possible, he is uneasy. He has a tendency to wait for the other shoe to drop.

As if reading his mind, she sits back and takes a deep breath. “It’s just for now.” He nods. Even as she suffers, she chooses the role of caretaker, and he allows her to. He’s saving his strength for the moment she falls to pieces. He flashes on the raw hurt in her face as she was saying goodbye to her mother, on the feeling of her hands clenched like an infant’s against his shirt as sobbed into him, and his chest burns so sharply that he puts a hand to it.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing… indigestion.”

“Don’t have a heart attack right now, Mulder,” she warns.

He drops his hand but does not stop staring at her.

“Go ahead, say it,” she says softly, because the look on his face seems to betray some deep, philosophical Mulderings. She is expecting a speech on ancient theories of the dead, hopeful theological references to reincarnation, or for him to read her the secrets of her own soul. Instead, he chuckles it away timidly.

“No, really, tell me what you were thinking,” she says somberly, bragging to herself she can handle it.

“No,” he says dismissively, eager to change the subject. “Are you still hungry?”

“Mulder, do not tiptoe around me –-“

“I wasn’t tiptoeing—“

“You know I can’t stand that shit, just tell me—“

“Your boobs! I was thinking they look really good in that shirt.”

She stares at him incredulously but it is only a moment before she starts laughing.

“I’m sorry, it’s really inappropriate,” he says. She is still laughing.

The sound settles into the back of her throat and the cadence of her joy, however fleeting, charges him like a battery.

“It’s just that it sort of skims you so perfectly around the curvy parts, and those, um, what do you call them?”

She knows what he means, it’s a bit of feminine tailoring magic that has always held his fascination. She thinly scrapes the word out through a delighted wheeze, “Darts.”

“Yes, the darts fall right in the right spot where your nipples would be, and um, it’s tight and there are no buttons on the top of it—“

She doubles over into her lap, her shoulders trembling with laughter, incidentally an excellent demonstration of what he’s talking about. She is now in the throes of a full-on kid-in-church laughing fit. It is rapturous, awesome, terrifying. Her nerves are raw, jumping and twitching evenly at every stimulus. He teases her like her life depends on it.

“What the hell happened to all your buttons Scully? I mean, I’ve noticed this a lot lately, and I don’t think it’s that you’re just not buttoning it up all the way, it’s that they’re not even there.”

She raises herself upright again, giggles finally receding, and flicks the corners of her eyes with a fingernail.

“One more thing,” he says faux-seriously and she nods, collecting herself. “Are they bigger? Because they seem bigger. Or a different shape. Is this a bra thing?”

She cackles and leans backward over the edge of the chair, her hands to her chest. Her fingers narrowly miss the dangling chain from her mother, and he realizes the mere contact could have transformed this moment. He watches her avoid touching it as she tries to catch her breath. Though he is trying to be helpful, there is a grain of truth to what he’s saying and the way she is arched back over that fucking chair rubs the grain up against him.

His throat is suddenly tight and he clears it.

She rests her temple on her fist as she places an elbow on the table. Her giddiness has subsided, leaving her cheeks damp. He is not surprised when she begins to cry in earnest. He reaches a hand out to her knee.

“Hey.”

She brushes him off gently, angry that vulnerability has found her in her brilliant hiding spot here at the Philadelphia Sheraton Suites. He tries to touch her arm again but she shakes her head, trying to sniffle up her grief into oblivion. He drops to his knees and crawls to her, placing his hands on her thighs like a well-behaved Golden Retriever.

He circles his arms around the whole of her and lays his head sideways in her lap. She bends forward at the waist, folding over him, and lets herself cry into his cheek. A bit of salty Scully water drips into the side of his mouth and he can swear he feels his heart tear, right along the fault line she drew inside him years ago, while he wasn’t looking.

He is not sure what she will need next, but he knows her well enough to know it’s not another person in the motel room crying. He tangles his hands in her hair and massages her head to divert his attention.

And then she is still, quiet. They breathe in tandem. She lifts his chin to face her and her eyes bore into him, the blue bossily parting the streaks of black mascara and bloodshot lids.

“Were you really sitting here tonight thinking about my tits?” she asks in a simple, uninflected tone he cannot read.

“Will you hate me tomorrow if I say yes?” he asks.

“I’ll hate you if you don’t.”

He reaches around her neck and unclasps the necklace, placing it on the table, watches her chest heave in relief. Then he picks up his cup of club soda and drizzles it down the front of her shirt. She startles at the cold, but smiles, and he finishes pouring it until the shirt is a deep violet color. He places the cup back down.

She is looking at him hungrily – no, desperately – her eyes begging him for a better hiding spot than the one she’d found herself. He can see the faint trace of her nipples hardening under the wet fabric.

“It’s a good shirt,” he says.

He brings his fingers to the buttons of her shirt and undoes them slowly. When he finishes, he takes his hands away and watches as her breath builds, coming stronger and stronger through her teeth as he traces the skin of her stomach, the simple thin nude bra, the pale, undulating mounds of her breasts framed between the open edges of her shirt. She sees the way he looks at her and feels she has in her possession a beauty secret worth millions. _The watchful eyes of Fox Mulder. Apply every night before bedtime._

He lifts his long arms to her shoulders and pushes the shirt down to her wrists until it is behind her on the chair. Taking her by the waist, he pulls her forward, planting kisses along her belly, up the plate of her chest, finally nudging his nose into the tops of her breasts. He lets his lips linger longer and longer, cresting back downward, until he is finally moving his tongue into the edge of the cup of her bra. He suffers the strain of the material against the underside of his tongue in exchange for the way she inhales when he finds her nipple and his tongue is squeezed between it and the fabric.

He moves the strap from her shoulder, intending to work slowly, but she reaches behind and unclasps it, letting it drop to her elbows as she pulls his face to hers and kisses him. She doesn’t have to ask twice.

He unzips her pants and she lifts her ass as he pulls them off, taking her panties along, tossing them behind him. He spreads her thighs and licks the full length of her folds. She slams her upper back into the chair in approval and he sucks one of his fingers to be sure, places it inside her. _Yes. She’s getting there._

He wiggles his finger inside her as he kisses her clit gently, waiting for –

“Come on, Mulder, just fuck me.”

That. That’s what he’s waiting for. She holds his face to hers, pressing his mouth open and burying her tongue practically down his throat as he unzips his pants, pulls his underwear around his ass and takes his dick in his hand.

She pushes herself forward on the chair, shifting her weight into his hands as she wraps her arms around his neck. He grips her legs and lowers her onto his the head of his penis. The way her breasts slide down his white shirt, black tie caught perfectly between them, makes him so crazy he almost feels guilty.

He sits back on his heels, giving her the reigns. Her face twists in agony as she rides him, works him further inside her. “Easy,” he says quietly, but she ignores him. The contents of the perfectly tailored crisp poplin blouse (he would only find out it was poplin tomorrow, when he asked) are now bobbing in front of him. His mouth waters.

“Well, come on, Mulder, you’ve been staring at them all day,” she pants.

He puts his lips to one of her nipples and runs his tongue around it as if he’s sealing it shut. She groans and speeds the rhythm of her hips, brings one of her hands to her clit. He squeezes her body to him, filling his mouth with her flesh.

She moans loudly and there is a bang on the wall from next door. She pauses and momentarily looks stricken as he lets go of her nipple with a loud, wet noise and pulls her flush to his torso. The hand on her clit is replaced with the pressure of his lower abdomen.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks, knowing there is only one answer to this question.

“Fuck them,” she purrs.

He watches as she tosses her head back, her hair brushing the top of his hand on her back. She rocks forward and drapes herself over him completely with heart-breaking fragility. Her tits are resting just beneath his chin where her head was earlier as he comforted her. Same act, different position. “I need it,” she says into his ear. He brings his mouth to her neck, works it over with his tongue, his lips and his teeth. He knows she likes her pleasure and pain mixed evenly.

“Was the last time you were in Philadelphia—“

“Yes,” she says breathily. “Don’t start.”

He growls possessively and bites her shoulder.

“Oh Mulderrrrr,” she whines huskily.   His mouth clutches at her skin and he watches it redden.

“You’re going to leave a mark,” she says wickedly.

“He left a mark, didn’t he?” He squeezes his fingers into the cheeks of her ass, pulling it apart so she can fall deeper onto him. “Oh, fuck you, Mulder,” she says. “It was a hundred years ago.”

He answers her with a deep thrust that reaches the end of her. She sighs like a creaky door hinge. “That fucking hurts,” she says gratefully, grinning through squinted eyes. She opens them and holds his face, her eyes searing him in half as he gives her what she wants.

“Yessssssss,” she praises, “yesssss.” Amen.

“Scully,” he whispers raspily. “You’re going to come soon.”

“I want you to come with me,” she says, leaning forward, her lips sticking to his ear, fingernails digging into the back of his scalp.

He fully exits and re-enters her, eliciting another string of expletives. He does it again and again as she wails his name. “Scully, oh goddammit that’s good,” he says as she braces herself against his shoulder and squeezes him in somehow further, burying him in herself as he comes. She lays out her breath like a pillow, one long, sexy vowel that lasts until his very last quiver.

He grabs her shirt from the chair and throws it on the floor before he gingerly lies her back onto the rough carpet. He collapses forward with her, the trunk of his body still between her wet legs, his weight leaning on an elbow outside her ribs. Her arms are up around her face. Her cheeks are pink beneath the pools of runny black mascara and her mouth is chapped red. She looks so alive and so beautiful that he nearly forgets what happened today. This is the effect Scully always had on him. But tonight she is the one who needs to forget.

She jumps as his fingers first land on her skin. He drags a hand up and down the front of her body, her skin clammy and soft.

“I know how to touch you, Scully,” he says and she relaxes into him.

He presses his hand into the space between her lungs as she expels air, soothing her as he compresses the space there. She closes her eyes and reflects on what they have done. “Oh my God,” she says, impressed at their combined abilities. They are the Houdini of emotional escape acts.

She looks for his face and runs her tongue between her lips pensively. He doesn’t want it to come back to her yet.

“What can I say, Scully? You have great tits.” She laughs, her back lifting slightly off the floor as it vibrates down her spine, and she holds her forehead with one of her hands. He draws her up into him and they lie there staring at the popcorn ceiling, listening to their hearbeats, her body occasionally shivering at the touch of his finger, his breath on her neck. Finally, her chest rises and falls against him so peacefully that he knows she can only be asleep. He scoops her into his arms awkwardly, carefully, and brings her to the bed, sliding his remaining clothes off as he comes to bed behind her. There on the sinewy slope of her lower middle back is the coiled red and green snake, the permanent, faded souvenir of her last trip to Philadelphia. This time, he is here.

She stirs and rolls over to re-tuck herself into the crook of his arm, but she doesn’t wake again until the morning. She has another fresh shirt in her bag.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it, feel free to make my day and tell me about it. Here, on tumblr as @somekindofseizure, or at somekindofseizure@gmail.com.


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